


Deflection of the question

by andalucite



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 13:11:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13881549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andalucite/pseuds/andalucite
Summary: It is easy to spot those who are here to hide, if you know what to look for





	Deflection of the question

Some people intentionally apply to Elsewhere University to hide; in a classroom where every name is a deflection, there is no risk of anyone looking someone up on facebook and finding things better left hidden. Not dangerous secrets, like spies and conspiracies, but a past made public in ways that hurt:

Old amber alert groups, nevermind that the missing children, if recovered, have to live with being tagged as ‘missing, lost, if found please call-’ for the rest of their lives, no matter how settled they get;

Links to news articles about court cases that include candid pictures and eager descriptions that prove how low humanity can get, lower than the Gentry in many ways, and how a crime does not just mean a criminal but a victim;

Private photographs, shared carefully but not carefully enough, and even if justice is found the fallout is never finished in a world where names are forever attached to faces and their bodies;

Parents dead and a fortune inherited and it is nothing like the stories and everything like a minefield– who wants fortune, who wants favour, who wants everything but the one left behind?

It is easy to spot those who are here to hide, if you know what to look for; the first days of freshman orientation, a blur of information traded back and forth as the new and uninformed are quite thoroughly informed to the point of feeling old, there is always the point where an introduction is formally made with one instruction: _any name but your own, and not a diminutive of your own._

The ones hiding, they have consciously avoided mentioning any names to begin with and are now _ready_ to choose their placeholder and hold it like a shield– or a sword– before them. They answer swiftly and surely, a fierce, concentrated joy in their words if not their faces.

_Poppy_

_Lopside_

_Analogue_

_Pirouette_

_Two Scars_

They are aware of the dangers of Elsewhere University perhaps a bit more than their other freshman peers, but not in the otherworldly way of those already Touched or Sighted or otherwise Favoured. Their world has already proved to be treacherous and dangerous to navigate, and it is an entirely earthly caution that puts iron around their necks and salt in their pockets as if it had been born there, alongside pepperspray and keychain shanks hanging with their student IDs (blessedly free of last names that carry too much weight).

They major in Criminal Justice or Law or Philosophy or Sociology or Psychology, all of them seeking to understand the people that intentionally hurt them as well as those who, after, unintentionally hurt them.

Some of them find themselves driven by desperation and lingering damage to make deals, looking into the inhuman dark for answers about their all-too-human dark.

Some of them quietly swear to never, ever make a deal with anyone, Gentry or human, again, having already lost everything (save their lives, perhaps left hanging by mere threads) to bad deals before even arriving at Elsewhere University.

Some of them find a rare and precious sliver of safety in the halls of Elsewhere, and they aren’t so foolish as to wash the salt out of their clothes but when it comes time to go home for the summer, they have a list of exactingly precise reasons as to why they cannot go home that just barely qualify them for the summer boarding program and they never leave Elsewhere University again.

They are scarred and marked by their time before attending Elsewhere University, and often Otherness finds an opening in these scars, slipping into strengthen blood and bone with unnatural grace and strength; it is not a favour granted by any of the Gentry, but a slow creep of the very fabric of the space that makes Elsewhere University Elsewhere, reaching tendrils out into the world through those who fell or were pushed through its cracks.

When they graduate, those who are able to leave, do.

They stand in courtrooms and behind curtains or in safehouses, putting themselves between the scum of the earth and the vulnerable. For the vulnerable who are no longer just vulnerable but shattered open, a quiet word and a glowing (literally) letter of recommendation sees them safe in the halls of Elsewhere University, breathing deep and sharp and confidently answering to a name- or names- that were never theirs to start with.


End file.
